Italian musician and producer Bruno Dorella guides us to Paradiso, his new solo album, with the music for the homonymous choreographic project of gruppo nanou, to be released on CD and digital on November 25th, 2022 by the independent label 13 / Silentes.
Paradiso borns for the choreography of the new show by gruppo nanou, a contemporary dance and performing arts company, founded by Marco Valerio Amico, Rhuena Bracci and Roberto Rettura. The collaboration between Dorella and the company has started almost a decade ago and over time has also involved Ronin and OvO, the main bands of the Ravenna-based musician – OvO were on stage in 2021 for Canto Primo: Miasma | Arsura, an encounter between sounds and infernal images, with Dante’s recurring reference.
But there is more than this. Paradiso is also the first electronic music album made by Dorella who, during the lockdown period, focused himself more and more on softwares. The tracks are composed according to the bodies and the choreography of the show. Dorella says: “The composition took a long time. The choreographic needs, and the effect of music on the bodies, led me often to think with a broader perspective. Me and the members of gruppo nanou started the work from mutual suggestions and gradually we understood each other faster and faster. We defined a common conception of rhythm, deciding to work on apparently ‘off-grid’ rhythms, creating the illusion of something wrong together but perfectly timed. In reality, these rhythms are parallel planes that travel in time with each other, even if out of phase“.
According to gruppo nanou: “Bruno has composed a choreographic work. We have verified together how sound can accommodate the body and be in dialogue with the scenic action. It was a transitive operation between scene and sound, bodies and the material density of sounds, vibrations and motion. The beauty of this musical work is that it is concrete matter and at the same time it is a precise thought. All the rules and limitations that we set for the creation of the show – regarding choreography, sound, lights and scene – have managed to be assimilated to become creative resources and therefore to become exact viscera“.
The journey of Paradiso is articulated into thirteen tracks and ends with the title track, which is also the brand new single from the album – available today October 21th on all digital platforms – and the only episode that can be assimilated to an “alien” song-form, featuring Francesca Amati (Comaneci) on the vocals. Dorella speaking: “We always thought that, at a certain point, we needed a ‘song’. With Francesca there is a long-standing collaboration and gruppo nanou loves her tone of voice, so it has always been clear that she would be the one to sing the song. But she had to do it in a non-existent and unidentifiable language. So, I broke down the syllables of what Francesca had sung, recomposing them with a new result“.
In Dorella’s long and eclectic career, Paradiso is only his second solo record, following Concerto per chitarra solitaria, realized for a contemporary classical music festival and released in 2019 by Bronson Recordings. “I always thought of ensemble music, never really in the solo dimension, and I always imagined that if I ever made a record on my own and with my name on it, it would be related to pure composition“, Dorella explains. Active since the late 90s, Bruno Dorella is also known under the pseudonym Jack Cannon and was a member of Wolfango, as well as founder of OvO, Ronin and Bachi da Pietra and more recently of Tiresia and GDG Modern Trio, as well as an element of Sigillum S. Paradiso is the first record that testifies his experience in the field of theater music, developed through collaboration with various theater and dance companies.
Paradiso is a collective effort among the contemporary research dance company gruppo nanou and the artist Alfredo Pirri. Its path begins in 2021 and continues until July 2022 through appointments, called sketches, intended as the progressive deepening and development of research and tests for the construction of a performative process that removes the concept of the beginning and end of a performance, as well as its front use.
The space is intended as an active place in which to immerse oneself, creating an impromptu community that accesses the performance as it happens in a museum exhibition. Paradiso is the beginning of a common journey starting from Third Canticle of Dante Alighieri’s Commedia; as a paradise, it is an elsewhere space, inhabited by light and evanescent figures; a long cinematic shot in which to immerse yourself thanks to the music of Bruno Dorella.
